World War II was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The war involved the many of the world's countries. Two opposing military alliances were formed: the Allies and the Axis.
While Japan was already at war with China in 1937, the Second World War began on September 1, 1939 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. Germany conquered much of Europe, eventually forming the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Approximately six million European Jews were killed by Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany and this event would become known as the Holocaust.
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Red Cross volunteers march in a parade in Rock Hill in early 1942, urging other citizens to share in "the dirty work" of helping win the war. Courtesy of the Winthrop University Archives.
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Columbia Army Air Base, aerial view, in 1943. Courtesy of the South Carolina State Museum.
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These Marines had just completed their training in April of 1943, and were on the train from the Yemassee Station en route to their wartime tour of duty. Courtesy of the United States Marine Corps...
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The Parris Island facilities for training Marines also expanded enormously during WWII. Here, new recruits march on the main parade grounds during a 1943 rainstorm. Courtesy of the United States...
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Winston Churchill toured Fort Jackson during his visit to the United States in 1942. Courtesy of the South Carolina Department of Education.
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The military buildup of World War II greatly expanded the facilities at the former Camp Jackson of the First World War. Renamed Fort Jackson in 1940, the Columbia facility became one of the main...
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The buildup of troops at Fort Jackson, even before the attack on Pearl Harbor, was the beginning of the many changes that World War II brought to Columbia, and indeed to all of South Carolina. The...
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Senate investigations of the profits that some American corporations had made selling war materials to Britain and France prior to World War I made many Americans suspicious of entanglements with...
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt occasionally stopped in Columbia on his train trips between Washington, D.C., and his home in Warm Springs, Georgia. But in January 1940, as the war expanded in Europe...
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In 2009, student filmmaker Morgan Adams created a film about the Doolittle Raiders for the National History Day Competition. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States government asked...
